


Ricky Numbers

by greenjudy



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Childhood Friends, Denzel grew up smart, Loyalty, M/M, Rick POV, WRO skullduggery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 14:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4438793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenjudy/pseuds/greenjudy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We got this little love-note from a guy says he knows you,” Barky informs me. “Says he’s got juicy intel to trade for your lying ass. WRO troop movements, no less.” </p><p>“He’s a special envoy for Director Tuesti,” Chuckles says, sounding happy. “Ready to give up the good stuff to rescue this <em>small fry arms dealer</em> we got right here.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ricky Numbers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CameoAmalthea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CameoAmalthea/gifts).



The door opens and there’s light, way too much of it, and the big one, guy I’ve taken to calling Chuckles, gets me under the arms and drags me out out of my cell and into the corridor. He lets go and I collapse in a heap. 

“Get up,” barks the little one. I call this one Barky, because he does that a lot. 

Yeah. Not happening. 

“Give me something to eat, I’ll square-dance for you,” I tell Barky. I keep my eyes shut tight against the light. 

“You can eat,” Barky says, “when you stop lying.” 

“I never lied. I’m just a small-time dealer,” I say, putting a little whine into it for effect. “I got no ties to the WRO.”

“Uh-huh,” Barky says. “That explains why they’re negotiating for your release right now.” 

He gets a toe into the small of my back, which doesn’t exactly encourage me to get moving, but then Chuckles hauls me up again. 

“Hose him off,” Barky says. “He has an appointment.” 

—

Half an hour later, they’ve scrubbed me down and stuck me in my old clothes. I’m still barefoot and still barely able to walk. My eyes are starting to work again, but it hurts, and I keep my face turned away from the light. 

“We got this little love-note from a guy says he knows you,” Barky informs me. “Says he’s got juicy intel to trade for your lying ass. WRO troop movements, no less.” 

“He’s a special envoy for Director Tuesti,” Chuckles says, sounding happy. “Ready to give up the good stuff to rescue this _small fry arms dealer_ we got right here.” 

“The Sons of Ramuh are gonna own the Golden Triangle now,” Barky says. 

They toss me into the back of a truck, and close the door. 

—

It’s been three months in the dark, just me and a bucket and the floor, punctuated by bright lights, fists, and a lot of screaming—most of it by guys trying to get me to talk, and a little of it by yours truly. 

I’d been working on a long-term project, trying to help take down a bunch of different groups of guys just like these guys. The Sons of Ramuh may sound like a boy-band, but they happen to be an extremely well-armed and persistent network of human traffickers that’s run spiderwebs from Junon to Gongaga to Wutai. 

My cover is, in fact, arms dealer, and to maintain my cover I do sell guns. But my primary trade is in weapons intelligence, or, well, let’s just call it what it is, _weapons porn;_ I come in, _hi, I’m Ricky Numbers:_ I shake your hand, drink your booze, and sell you specs for home-made Benders and Moags. And then, when you’re happy, when you trust me, I sell you the good stuff, fresh off Reeve’s desk, watermarked blueprints for weapons in development, next year’s tech, very shiny. 

The blueprints don’t make real weapons, but they almost do; and after I meet the people and cut the deals and bring the conduits out into the open, the WRO sends in the helicopters, along with some guys with real guns. 

In the business I’m what’s known as a “face.” What this actually means is that I am the first guy to get shot _in_ the face, if I am unlucky. So clearly, this is a very limited-time kind of job. There’s only so many times you can sell a shady bill of goods to drug-runners or guys trying to set up a humans-for-sale empire. My handler, Tseng, even agreed to take me out of play for a year or so, time to set me up with a different cover and embed me somewhere new, after I wrapped up this one last deal. 

Unfortunately, this one last deal was the one that went sour; one of my contacts in New Junon gave me up, and I walked into an ambush. 

The Sons of Ramuh didn’t kill me, which confused me at first. Well, they threatened to kill me a lot. And periodically they’d take me outside into the steaming heat and stand me up against a wall, and I’d listen to their Benders charging. But they never opened fire and I never died. They were too sure they had a WRO agent in me, a potentially valuable hostage. 

Looks like they were right. 

—

The truck comes to a stop and when they pull me out, we’re in a clearing in the middle of the rainforest, which is my first clue that I’ve been held hostage for three months on the Western Continent. 

There’s a horrendous noise, which I realize is coming from a helicopter that has landed at the middle of the clearing. No, scratch that, the helo’s not landing, it’s taking off, leaving this guy behind, tall and skinny and wearing a suit, like he was expecting to be dropped off at a garden party. This isn’t any of the WRO negotiators I’ve ever met. He’s barely more than a kid, wearing sunglasses to try and look brave. 

I still can’t see too well, but this guy, with his tailored suit and thick brown hair—pretty much the epitome of a WRO guy being groomed for the ascendancy—strikes a chord. Something about the hair, the set of the shoulders…do I know this guy? I can’t tell from here. 

He’s holding a bulky metal briefcase that looks heavy. 

“Show us your stuff, _special envoy,_ ” Barky sneers. 

“I wanna…I wanna see him first,” the guy says, his voice unsteady.

Chuckles grabs me by the hair and presses a gun into my neck. I stumble forward into the clearing. 

The guy’s face is white behind his sunglasses. 

“Okay,” he says, “deal.” He sets his briefcase on the ground and starts walking backwards.

Chuckles shoves me to the ground and points his gun at the guy in the suit. 

“Just stay there,” he says. 

The guy in the suit stops cold.

“Let’s verify,” Barky says. He strides towards the briefcase. Chuckles kicks me in the kidney, apparently for fun. I get a terrible conviction that both of us, me and the guy, are about to be shot dead. 

Barky pops the locks and opens the case, and a cloud of smoke—no, I think that's _nitrogen,_ what the fuck— 

There’s only one thing I know of that comes from the WRO and likes to travel in supercooled suitcases. 

I roll into a ball, covering my eyes and ears. Unlike Barky and Chuckles, I know exactly what happens next. 

—

First, there’s a flash bomb, a big one; I hear Chuckles throw himself backward in surprise and hit the truck with a thud.

Then, and of course I don’t see this, I just know this, an EMP with a quarter-mile radius fries all the phones, preventing Barky and Chuckles from summoning back-up.

The third thing that happens is an utterly disorienting mélange of sound and light, or what Kisaragi, who invented it, likes to call “the old razzle-dazzle.” 

It’s like being at the worst nightclub in the world.

Hands are scrabbling at me and a baffle rig is shoved over my head. It doesn’t do much to cut the noise and light, but I appreciate the sentiment. The guy in the suit gathers me into his arms and lurches to his feet. He’s got me in a fireman’s carry and he’s running, not very quickly but with great determination, away from the suitcase, which is, I know, about to do its fourth thing: 

Explode. 

—

The guy carries me a long way; all the way, as far as I can tell, out of the perimeter of the EMP. I can feel his arms starting to shake, but he just keeps going. It’s a good precaution; the Sons of Ramuh might have been waiting for Barky to check in. For all I know, they could be right behind us. 

We’re pushing through heavy undergrowth; thick vines whip my face and we run through a lot of wet, slimy moss. One time he loses his footing and we crash to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. He sobs a curse under his breath and hoists me back over his shoulders. 

Finally he crests a long, low hill and drops to one knee, and I half-slide, half-roll off his back. We huddle on the far slope of the hill, hopefully out of sight. “Hang on,” he says, winded, “hang on a second.” I slowly push my baffle rig off, but I keep my eyes closed. I’m functionally blind at this point. 

“You’re okay?” he gasps.

“Think so,” I tell the guy. 

“These baffle rigs,” he wheezes, “don’t work very well.”

“I concur. But thanks anyway. Definitely better than nothing.” 

The guy takes a heaving, shuddering breath, and starts laughing. 

“This is a fucked-up operation, man. I’m sorry—sorry about this. Lucky thing we found this hill, we’re gonna need a break in the canopy to get out of here—I was an idiot, should have topo-ed the area beforehand with Reno,” he says, half to himself. “Idiot.”

Oh, this is familiar. 

“Are we…do we have a ride?” I ask cautiously. 

“Hope so,” he says, and that clinches it. I know this voice, and I know this guy. 

I fall backward a decade in time; I’m twelve, soaked in sweat after a long, hot day of foraging, lying on a pile of junk next to my friend, who’s picking through our haul of salvage, a kid who used to say exactly those words to me in exactly that same tone of voice, like maybe the world was going to kick him in the nuts again. My best friend, once upon a time; a guy I thought would always have my back, until he surprised me. 

“Are we far enough away…? Gonna risk it,” he says then, a little cryptically, and then I hear the distinctive pop of a flare gun. I catch on; his phone must have been wrecked just like all the others. I hope the Sons of Ramuh don’t catch on, too. 

“I still can’t see,” I admit. “It’s—Denz—it’s you, right?” 

“Yeah,” the guy says. “It’s Denzel.” 

And his hand goes over mine, and stays there until Reno’s helicopter arrives, and they strap me onto a stretcher. 

—

As it turns out, the WRO had been conducting searches for me for months. They couldn’t negotiate, even secretly, because the Sons would make it known far and wide that the WRO was ready to cut deals with the underworld. That would destroy our credibility, ruin our ability to work with desperately needy groups all over the Planet, groups that were already having trouble trusting us. 

I knew this in my bones, lying on the floor of my little prison in the jungle. I knew and accepted that because of WRO’s rules of engagement, I was probably done. 

And I know it now, lying here in bed at the WRO infirmary on a saline drip, with a nice view of the meadow where the soldiers practice maneuvers. The WRO couldn’t afford to rescue me. 

So what the hell had Denzel managed to do? 

And why?

—

Back when I was a kid, I would never have said it out loud to anyone, but I liked the world better after the Plate fell, and Meteor came. Living under the Plate—you were in a place full of rules you didn’t make, doing a job you hated, because that was “getting by,” that was life, and nothing could change that. 

After the Plate dropped, the whole world shifted; it became, to use one of Tseng’s words, malleable. I’m not making light of the pain and destruction and loss. But Shiva’s tits, if the sky could come down and pancake your town, what the fuck else could happen? The answer, when I was twelve, seemed to be “anything at all.” I’d been an orphan since I was six. The ruined Plate took things from a lot of people, I know. But it gave me the sky. 

So even though I knew Denzel was a Plate kid, it never occurred to me that he still had Plate ideas in his head; I figured they’d gotten knocked loose, like all my slum ideas, and now it was up to us to fish around in that big pile of old ideas for the good stuff, the salvage, and then build something new. 

It took me a long time to understand that for Denzel, the ruined Plate wasn’t a beautiful pile of second chances; it was a crypt for everything he loved. When he said, “I’ll be a slum kid, and eat rats,” he didn’t mean to insult me. 

What he really meant was, “I’ll walk a path of pain and fire, because nothing else is left.” 

By the time I understood this, we hadn’t spoken for years. We had both joined the WRO—I was paramilitary and tactical, he was…something in engineering, as far as I could tell. We were both older, both…it was something past, the present’s calling; grow up, Rick, get to work, this guy, Denzel, he’s in your rear view mirror. 

But I didn’t forget. 

—

When they let me out of the infirmary three weeks later, I shave the monstrous beard but keep the hair. None of my clothes fit me anymore, so I look strange to myself in mirrors—too skinny, swimming in cargo pants and my old field jacket, a collection of plastic medication bracelets on my wrists, with my hair in a braid and a wary expression on my face I don’t recognize. 

It’s time to go to Edge. I have a few questions for my handler. 

—

Tseng keeps a little unofficial office space above Johnny’s Heaven. 

It’s actually Johnny’s Mark II, because several phases into the development of Edge’s city center the old Quonset hut where he’d been set up got demolished to make room for new housing. Johnny’s new place is on the ground floor of a skinny little apartment building on Marshmallow Street with two little trees growing out front. It looks positively respectable now in comparison to the old place, and Johnny pulls fancy coffee drinks as often as he pours scotch. 

Tseng’s up a staircase and tucked in next door to Mrs. Mo and her cats. She likes to play old-timey Wutainese music—she’s kind of deaf, and the walls are thin, so there’s always a soundtrack to our meetings. I think Tseng likes the music, though, because he’s always leaving cans of tuna in a neat little stack in front of Mrs. Mo’s door. 

The fact that Tseng’s my handler and not, say, Kisaragi, points to a complicated truth about my line of work. 

The WRO tries hard to be the good guy. Most of its resources go to humanitarian aid and building projects. We roll out roads, fix infrastructure, give kids their shots. From time to time, though, we run into troubles that can’t be resolved with antibiotics and a friendly smile. Our military arm is streamlined, but pretty effective. We also have decent intelligence networks—who doesn’t, these days? Even good guys need an edge. Kisaragi runs the intel side of the WRO, mainly the bankable intel, secrets useful for trade and influence. But this is all still very ho-hum standard stuff, what you’d expect from any NGO that’s trying to make a difference without getting its guys killed. 

I’m not part of that. 

The _very_ secret projects, the projects the WRO’s not supposed to run, aren’t managed by Kisaragi. She cut some kind of deal with the Turks from the bad old days, the guys that don’t have last names. Since Reeve’s very public split with Rufus about five years ago, there’s only a handful of people at the WRO who know about the Turks and what they’re doing for us. 

Or _to_ us, as the case may be. I’ve been running with the Turks-that-were for two years now; long enough, I figure, to have earned me the right to put a boot print or two on my handler’s forehead. 

“What the hell was that?” I shout at Tseng. His door didn’t shut all the way when I came banging in; I kick it closed, which feels good, and experience a wave of vertigo, which doesn’t feel so good. 

“If you keep storming around like that,” he says mildly, “you might pass out. Sit down.”

“I’m practicing being a guy who’s not chained to the floor. I’ll stand, thanks,” I tell him. 

Tseng looks up at me from his desk, his eyes hooded. 

I remember that he and Elena have also done some time in a dark place, and the Remnants entertaining Tseng had had a lot less reason to keep him alive. I was a bargaining chip for the Sons of Ramuh. Tseng and Elena? They were playthings for those crazy bastards. 

I make a face and start over again. 

“I’m not”—I wave my hands—“talking about getting caught, or how long I had to cook in there. I knew the risks; that isn’t it. I’m here about Denzel. _Denzel._ What was that? What the hell were you thinking?”

“Rick,” Tseng says, “sit down.” He touches an intercom on his desk. “Tea for two, Johnny, please,” he says. 

“Look, man,” I say, “don’t start with the moist towelettes on me, okay? They took out the IV drip. I’m okay. I need to get used to stuff again. Don’t start giving me tea and funny looks.”

“Tea won’t hurt you, and it will help me,” Tseng says. “You have a talent for giving me a headache. Maybe it’s the way you like to close my door. Besides, I hear you’ve been giving the nursing staff trouble. You’re supposed to be putting on weight.”

“The food at HQ is crap,” I remind him. 

“You’re anemic,” Tseng says shortly. 

“Nah, I’m pale and interesting,” I argue. True, three weeks after my rescue I’m still wearing tinted glasses to protect my eyes and pants that are trying to fall off my hips, but hey, at least I’m walking. 

"I understand you attended two therapy sessions before declaring to the counselor that you were, I quote, 'all better now.'" 

I give him a brilliant smile. He just looks at me. 

"Don't neglect this," he says.

There’s a knock, and a kid brings in a big pot of green tea, a plate of pork rinds, and a couple of moogle-shaped coffee cups. Tseng lifts his eyebrow at the pork rinds, dismisses the kid, and pours the tea. I have a seat, grab a handful of pork rinds, give Tseng the eye, and deliberately cram them into my mouth. Delicious. 

“In better news,” Tseng says, “you and Denzel did some damage to the Sons of Ramuh.”

“We chopped out a few of their stupider guys, exposed one of their compounds,” I object. “That’s not much.”

“You hurt their standing in the underworld,” Tseng corrects me. “They got taken. Lost their advantage. They’re a laughing-stock now, and the WRO’s gained a new reputation—maybe not quite as innocent and pure, but a damn sight sneakier and smarter than anyone thought. That’s to our benefit, ultimately.” 

“Yeah, I guess,” I grumble. “Won’t really stop the boatloads of little Wutainese kids getting sold to some asshole in New Junon.” 

“Take the win,” Tseng says. “I’d also like to point out that you are alive. Denzel pulled that off, and you’re here to shout at me about it.” 

“I’m here because I want to know what he was doing on that op. By _himself._ He’s a civilian, man—the Civilian of Civilians. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near this.” 

Tseng tilts his head to one side and studies me.

“What?” I ask, exasperated. 

Tseng, eyebrows raised, shifts his attention to his manicure. 

“He did show a surprising aptitude for intelligence work,” he says finally, helping himself to a pork rind. “Hm. Not bad. But I doubt we’ll see any further…interdepartmental cooperation on that front. Reeve apparently ate him for breakfast when the two of you got back. Then he came and chewed on me for awhile. He has plans for Denzel.” 

“Yeah, I gathered,” I told him. 

I did a little checking after I left the infirmary; Denzel’s not a “special envoy.” Or maybe he’s a _very_ special envoy. At any rate, his name is not in the WRO directory and the chain of command between him and Reeve appears to have exactly two links in it: him, and Reeve himself. 

“Well, rest assured: that was Denzel’s first wet op,” Tseng says. “Hopefully his last.” 

“Why’d you go through with it, sir?” I ask.

“’Sir,’” Tseng says, amused. “That’s a new one.”

“He’s one of Reeve’s crucial guys; he’s the _future,_ all right? And me, I’m not irreplaceable or anything,” I say. “It was a stupid risk.” 

“Denzel put a gun to my head,” Tseng says. “Threatened to expose my networks and give Rufus information about my…consultation work for the WRO. He insisted on running the op. The Kisaragi Lunch Box was his idea, incidentally.” Tseng smiles, a little ruefully. “I understand you both have some permanent hearing loss. It’s unfortunate.”

I sit there and soak in the image of Denzel, bending Tseng to his will, to save me.

 

—

After an hour of roaming the maze-like corridors of HQ, I find Denzel in a little two-room office on the third floor labeled “Private.” He’s hunched over his desk in the back room—seriously, he has terrible posture—and he hasn’t noticed me yet, so I lean on the wall in the vestibule and watch him for awhile. He’s tapping the end of his pen against his mouth, and his hair’s in his eyes. 

As I look at him I think about how young he is, the fact that he still looks like a kid, albeit a kid in a really nice suit. I think about the way he stammered and hesitated in the clearing and basically destroyed my captors with their own expectations. I think about what he’s doing, at his age, and what he could do, given time. 

Denzel caps his pen. 

“Solve it yet?” I ask him. He looks up, startled. 

“Solve…what?”

“It. Edge. The problem. Whatever the problem is.” 

“The problem is a poisoned water table around Midgar,” Denzel says, “and no, I’ve not solved it yet.” He straightens out the papers on his desk and gets to his feet, rolling his shoulders. I come around the desk beside him. 

“Thanks for visiting me in the infirmary,” I tell him. 

“I’m—glad you’re feeling better,” he says, reserved, like he’s not sure why I’m really here. 

“You done for the day?” 

“I think so. I hope so,” he says, looking down at his desk like it has a terrible secret to disclose to him. 

“Then let’s go. I need to eat, I’m apparently anemic. Or…” I say slowly, “do you still have those strange culinary instincts from the last time we hung out?” 

Denzel blinks, fast. 

“Rats,” I murmur. “Sweet mother of Shiva.” 

“Rick,” he says, white-faced and still looking at his desk, “about that—“ 

I cuff him lightly on the side of the head, like I did back in the days when I was the tall one. 

“Your head was screwed on backwards,” I say. “You weren’t thinking straight.”

“I wasn’t thinking straight,” he whispers. 

“And then after Geostigma and all that crazy stuff, you grew up and got all tucked in under Reeve’s wing, but you never forgot your little low-life buddy, Rick—“

“Rick—“

“And you got a nice suit and learned calculus or spline geometry or whatever the fuck it takes to fix the water table but through all that—I never stopped thinking about you,” I say.

We both pull up short, because there’s something about what I just said that hurts like the truth. 

“I never stopped thinking about you, Rick,” he says, tears in his eyes.

I cuff him again, more gently this time. 

“Don’t look so miserable,” I tell him. “Oh yeah—and don’t ever rescue me again, okay? The more I think about what you just did, the more it scares me. Your job,” I poke his chest, “is fixing the world, not saving dumb ops like me.”

“I did fix the world,” Denzel says in a low voice. “I fixed my world.” 

I’m silenced, feeling the shock of it, what he says, what he means. 

“And I want to apologize, properly,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. 

I take a deep breath, and crack a grin. 

“Apologize with squid.” 

“Wh—what?”

“Let’s go eat squid. Barbecued squid.” 

“Barbecued squid.”

“Yeah, I want tentacles for some reason. Besides, they don’t live in the water table, they’re ocean-going, they should be OK. Right? Your treat.”

“You’re absurd,” Denzel says. He’s getting his coat.

“I may be absurd,” I sing, “but you’re buying.”

“I’m buying _tonight._ ”

“Tonight and every night, baby. I’m talking about the big food, now.”

“In your dreams,” Denzel snorts. 

Just before we leave his office, I touch his arm. 

“Thank you,” I say, “for saving my life.” 

He turns to face me, and for a second, I catch a glimpse of the kid who looked into the space where the Plate used to be, and saw nothing but fire. 

“‘Ricky Numbers,’” he mutters. “Who the hell gets called that?” 

“It’s a trade name,” I say, shrugging. “I didn’t pick it.” 

“Yeah, well, your number was almost up!” 

He’s holding me by the lapels, and suddenly I find I’m holding _him_ by the lapels. 

“I…can’t make you stop, can I,” Denzel says. 

“Ricky Numbers is blown,” I tell him. “That identity is toast. Whatever I do, I can’t be that anymore.” 

Denzel nods like I’m going in the right direction, but he doesn’t let go of my lapels. 

“Thing is, I’m good at this,” I say. “I’m useful. I have a crazy high success rate, and it’s the single most efficient way I can come up with that lets me personally remove drug dealers and slave-traders from the planet, and that makes me happy.” 

“I want you to be happy,” Denzel says. “But I—Rick, I can see your skull through your skin. You’re so good at so many things. Do something else. Don’t go back out there.” 

I bow my head and put a hand on his chest. 

“Tonight,” I say, very quietly, “I’ll have squid with you. Then you can decide my fate.” 

“You swear?” he whispers.

“I swear,” I tell him. 

“You’re a great mechanic,” he says. 

“Used to be.”

“Diplomat?” he says, and I choke with laughter. 

We walk away down the corridor, our hands in our pockets and our sunglasses on, and he’s close by my shoulder, and it makes me shake a little, because I’m still raw and fragile from living three months in the dark, and the sense-memory is there, so vivid, from my time as a kid in the ruins of Sector Seven with my best friend, Denzel, who had my back.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Cam, this was an adventure! It's always tricky writing for other people, and that goes double when you're not totally familiar with the canon. I hope this version of their future feels plausible to you and that even though this is kind of mild and ambiguous, that you like things about the guys' dynamic. 
> 
> I found Rick and Denzel inspiring to think about and I definitely have an itch to write more stories about them. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to get to know them.


End file.
